12/10/22 | Chioggia > Woke up in Bologna, drove northeast towards Venice, for a good part along narrow 1-lane roads (w/ 2-way traffic) along foggy canals, to Chioggia... actually, we're staying on the mainland peninsula, Sottomarina, just b/c we can actually park a car there. Walked into Chioggia across bridges + through the fishmarket.... Chioggia is like a mini-Venice for those not wanting to deal w/ the shitstorm of tourists. Ate at El Gato which was great, pesce crudo appetizer, steamed clams + pasta w/ these special little orange clams they have only in this region, fasolari. Our last night in Bologna we also ate seafood at our fave seafood (Sicilian) place, Pescheria Aldrovandi, more pesce crudo + vongole... after a few days of eating meat we felt like crap + were having disturbing dreams of ½-decaying animals limping along like leprous zombies w/ body parts falling off + the cured meats in particular mixed w/ red wine seemed to trigger a bad vestibular migraine/Ménière's episode yesterday. So from here on out it's all seafood for us, especially on the coast surrounded by all these fishing boats. Took a boat ride around Chioggia + into the lagoon + past 1 of the 3 entrances to Venice lagoon where the 6 billion MOSE project keeps high tides from flooding Venice... guess a few weeks they had a really high tide, higher than the previous record flooding from a few years ago + the dam held, so it works so far. The foggy mist turned into more of a rain so we retreated back to our hotel. Ate dinner near our hotel at M4 Cento.

driving along fiume Gorzone

Chioggia

fish market

entry point to Venice lagoon (gray building on left is MOSE... the barrier not up since it's not high tide)

mussel beds

clam boats (metal contraption on front dredges through sand)

scallops + truffles in bed of purple potatoes (at M4 Cento)

12/11> Woke up + went for a walk in cold rain + gale-force winds... so far it's rained every day since we've been in Italy. This is what the wind sounded like blowing through the harbor:

Went to the tip + out onto the jetty w/ the distinct trabucchi they use on the Adriatic coast, piers they fish from rather than going out on boats. There were tons of kiteboarders, some flying seemingly out of control through the air.

trabucchi + kiteboarder

trabucco

garbage blown in by the winds

note kite-surfer 50 ft up in the air

> Finished The White Album by Joan Didion... some of the topics are seemingly random, but boy can she write + especially interesting for us, growing up in California... seems almost all the essays we're about California in the late 60s to early 70s. Speaking of dams, seems i already quoted this (from "At the Dam"), but worth repeating:

I walked across the marble star map that traces a sidereal revolution of the equinox and fixes forever, the Reclamation man had told me, for all time and for all people who can read the stars, the date the dam was dedicated. The star map was, he had said, for when we were all gone and the dam was left. I had not thought much of it when he said it, but I thought of it then, with the wind whining and the sun dropping behind a mesa with the finality of a sunset in space. Of course that was the image I had seen always, seen it without quite realizing what I saw, a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation, transmitting power and releasing water to a world where no one is.